Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance - cover image

Copyright

Liliane Campos; Pierre-Louis Patoine;

Published On

2022-10-11

ISBN

Paperback978-1-80064-749-7
Hardback978-1-80064-750-3
PDF978-1-80064-751-0
HTML978-1-80064-755-8
XML978-1-80064-754-1
EPUB978-1-80064-752-7
AZW3978-1-80064-753-4

Language

  • English

Print Length

418 pages (xvi+402)

Dimensions

Paperback156 x 29 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.14" x 9.21")
Hardback156 x 32 x 234 mm(6.14" x 1.26" x 9.21")

Weight

Paperback789g (27.83oz)
Hardback967g (34.11oz)

Media

Illustrations60

LCCN

2021386012

BIC

  • DS
  • DSK
  • FA
  • DSB
  • PS
  • RNT
  • AFKP

BISAC

  • LIT000000
  • SCI020000
  • SCI008000
  • ART060000

LCC

  • PN55

Keywords

  • life sciences
  • fiction
  • poetry
  • comics
  • performance
  • ethics
  • philosophy
  • politics
  • biological imagination

Life, Re-Scaled

The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance

This edited volume explores new engagements with the life sciences in contemporary fiction, poetry, comics and performance. The gathered case studies investigate how recent creative work reframes the human within microscopic or macroscopic scales, from cellular biology to systems ecology, and engages with the ethical, philosophical, and political issues raised by the twenty-first century’s shifting views of life. The collection thus examines literature and performance as spaces that shape our contemporary biological imagination.

Comprised of thirteen chapters by an international group of academics, Life, Re-Scaled: The Biological Imagination in Twenty-First-Century Literature and Performance engages with four main areas of biological study: ‘Invisible scales: cells, microbes and mycelium’, ‘Neuro-medical imaging and diagnosis’, ‘Pandemic imaginaries’, and ‘Ecological scales’. The authors examine these concepts in emerging forms such as plant theatre, climate change art, ecofiction and pandemic fiction, including the work of Jeff Vandermeer, Jon McGregor, Jeff Lemire, and Extinction Rebellion’s Red Rebel Brigade performances.

This valuable resource moves beyond the biological paradigms that were central to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to outline the specificity of a contemporary imagination. Life, Re-Scaled is crucial reading for academics, scholars, and authors alike, as it proposes an unprecedented overview of the relationship between literature, performance and the life sciences in the twenty-first century.

Endorsements

This collection expands our vision of the relationship between the life sciences and literature, allowing the reader to unearth connections between topics from ecology to neuroscience and media from poetry to performance art. Thirteen elegantly written chapters demonstrate how life becomes a matter of concern in the 21st century.

Prof Rebecca Wilbanks

Reviews

Life, Re-Scaled provides much-needed rigorous analyses of the affective and aesthetic potentials of literature and performance to engage with, and attend to, the heterogenous scales of life across microbiological and planetary scales [...] What is particularly salient about Life, Re-Scaled is that it includes methodologies in which science and art are not domains that merely influence each other: the contributors explore the “cross-currents” and “cross fertilizing of imaginaries” across contemporary artistic work, cultural representational popularizations of the life sciences, and philosophy.

Dr Sarah Hopfinger

Performing Arts Journal, 2024. doi:10.1162/pajj_r_00704

Contributors

Pierre-Louis Patoine

(editor)
Assistant Professor in American literature at Sorbonne Nouvelle University